Tuesday’s Best Reviewed: The Expanse

For the second week in a row, Syfy’s quickly-emerging-as-cult-classic space opera, The Expanse, wins the night, and this evening’s prime time programming was dense and mostly well-reviewed. The Muppets reboot of a reboot (well, mostly just tinkering) didn’t particularly inspire, but left room for hope. Rob Lowe’s up-til-now affable sitcom, The Grinder, may have just found its meta voice on its best episode to date — one which benefits from a game performance by Timothy Olyphant as a slicker version of himself. New Girl continued to do just fine without its titular character, while Fresh Off the Boat dug into a holiday rarely, if ever, used before as TV comedy fodder. Perhaps the biggest debut of the night, anticipated mini-series The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story opened promisingly.

Tuesday, February 2nd’s Best: The Expanse (9.5/10)

The Expanse closes out its surprisingly successful first season with a flourish as its two-hour finale receives our best score to date (granted, its a small sample size). IGN dubs the episode “amazing” for its knack at “filling in some of the holes in the story that we’ve had from the start of the season. AV Club also touts the upswing, noting the “signs of the writers getting more adventurous in the season’s latter half; here’s hoping the trend continues,” before descending into a reverie about “blue stuff.”